George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

My brother in law scored some tickets to see the Romero zombie flick (or zombie training film if you prefer) at the Sundance Film Festival. We caught the 9:00 pm showing at the Tower Theater in downtown Salt Lake City.

WOW!!!

This movie was AWESOME!!!

Let me preface this by saying that Romero basically cast the film with a bunch of no name actors that give it the feel from his earlier work. A girl who came with us said that it had a "campy" feel to it.

Two of the actors from the movie (Michelle Morgan and some guy I can't remember) introduced the film and answered questions about it afterwards. They said that "George" started working on the script for this film right after Land of the Dead; he had to do it "for the fans". The film was shot in less than 20 days on a budget of $5 million. He did this small and low budget so he could call the shots on the film, and get away from the big budget work where he had to appease "the money". In their words, this is an "Indy Film".

Many fans have been critical of George A. Romero's recent work, most notably Land of the Dead - I implied from the statements of the actors tonight that Mr. Romero has been working inside a very small box, and this film is an attempt (a very successful attempt in my opinion) to get back to his roots.

I was able to ask one of the lead actresses a question on behalf of all zombie fanatics:

Scar Belly - "What weapons do you plan on using for the upcoming zombie uprising?"

(The audience laughed pretty hard at that one - the actors didn't quite understand what I was asking...)

Michelle Morgan - "Um... I don't know, I hope that in the next film we get to find an Army base and use tanks to run them over - as long as we crush their heads that would be cool"

I highly recommend this film - it had all the critical elements of a good zombie flick:

hot girls - check
guns - check
creative methods of zombie brain destruction - check
over the top dramatic acting - check

It also settles the age old question of whether zombies "shamble" or run.

It was funny to see the audience erupt in applause whenever a zombie was "put down"/character killed in a dramatically unique way.